The Ethereum mainnet successfully completed the Shapella upgrade on April 12. The successful execution of the Shapella update means that Ethereum validators can finally withdraw their staked Ether on the Beacon chain.
At the time of writing, validators had withdrawn a total of 126,955.07 ETH. Currently, 248,043 of the 559,549 active validators, or about 44% of them, have the possibility to request partial or full withdrawals. Most withdrawals currently vary between 2.8 and 3.2 ETH, indicating that most validators are only withdrawing their staking rewards.
The average staked ETH price is $3,149 and could be another reason why validators are not withdrawing the full amount. ETH price is currently trading just below $2,000 with the price acting as key resistance.
Major cryptocurrencies have announced their support for ETH deleveraging and several of them are already processing withdrawal requests. Coinbase, the world’s first publicly traded cryptocurrency, announced that ETH withdrawal is now live on its platform.
The Shapella Upgrade is complete. Congratulations to the @Ethereum community! ETH staking is now enabled on https://t.co/bCG11KNnW0. https://t.co/JcTxAVphGZ
—Coinbase (@coinbase) April 12, 2023
BitGo COO Chen Fang took to Twitter to announce that the custodian has successfully upgraded to Shapella and the ETH withdrawals are now live on the platform.
Kraken, for its part, began removing validators for its US customers on April 11 and began to process ETH withdrawals after the completion of the Shapella upgrade. The exchange’s early withdrawal of validators stems from the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s action against Kraken’s Ethereum staking product in February.
For clarity:
Validators are currently able to exit but the associated 32 ETH stake and consensus layer rewards are not able to be withdrawn (aka moved around) until Shapella goes live in around 12 hours
What Kraken is doing right now is exiting their validators
— sassal.eth (@sassal0x) April 12, 2023
Kraken Australia managing director Jonathon Miller told Cointelegraph that while such a high amount of staking ETH could cause some price volatility, it will bring users to the ecosystem in the long run. He explained:
“While this unlock event may create the conditions for an exodus from the staking protocol, the ability to stake and divest freely (according to the tying periods specified by the protocol) could equally appeal to many ETH holders. The move Unstaking could see a massive movement of assets into Ethereum staking pools.”
Binance, the leading cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, said it will support the Shappela upgrade and begin processing requests for withdrawals from April 19. The cryptocurrency exchange also added that the request for withdrawals may take up to 15 days to process due to processing limitations.
#Binance will support USDETH 2.0 Staking withdrawals starting from April 19, 08:00 UTC.
Due to the processing limitations on the USDETH network, ETH withdrawal requests may take up to 15 days to several weeks to be fully processed.
More details here ⤵️https://t.co/L3iyon58lo
—Binance (@binance) April 13, 2023
Bitfinex, one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges congratulated the Ethereum community on the successful upgrade and said that details of ETH withdrawals will be shared soon.
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